Flickers
by VulkansNodosaurus
Summary: "That's the thing - no Lantern is ordinary. Not before they get the ring, and especially not after." One-shot.


It comes out of nowhere, a green ring on your finger. Telling you that you've been given power like few others in the entire universe, and calling you to save it. You doubt this Green Lantern Corps is a hundredth as important as the ring makes it sound – a quick 'Net search brings up nothing except legends, the most recent of those two thousand years old, before the Galactic Federation was even established. But you accept anyway, because hey, it's a nice prank at least.

And then you lift into the sky, and faster, and you're somehow superluminal because of a ring on your finger, and even that becomes irrelevant when you become the first member of your species to leave your galaxy behind.

* * *

Oa is supposed to be the center of the universe. You aren't going to question the Guardians on that – they seem, if not trustworthy, at least aware of what they're doing. You go through hell in something resembling boot camp, but you've never been one to turn away from a path because of a little hell. And if the average lifespan of a member of this Corps is only four years, then hey, you've always made a habit of overcoming odds like that.

Your first mission after completing training is investigating a spike in death rates among the Unblooded Stars, somewhere a supercluster away from your own galaxy. You're accompanied by your sector partner, a humorless and paranoid sort who takes it upon himself to teach you all the possible ways a mission can end in your death.

Your partner dies with blood spurting out of his various extremities, due to some kind of sapient disease like nothing ever seen before.

You don't really remember how you manage to win there, alone, in the Unblooded Stars. How your nanoscale constructs were fast enough to counter the miasma, how you allowed the molten graphite of the High Crucible to coat you without killing you. But after you return to Oa, forced to leave your partner's corpse in those blood-tainted stars, you search for analogues. You find a billion years of history and a trillion fallen Lanterns, and every member of that constellation of will remembered, chronicled, and memorialized justly. And in all of them together, countless stories like your own – some less grim, some (as the virus Despotellis) more so, but no sign of that particular plague emerging earlier.

A billion years of history, a trillion fallen Lanterns; but how many times would the universe have been destroyed, if not for them?

* * *

You fight alongside an Earthling for the first time, half a year into your service, on Arassat. There's a warlord there who wishes to conquer the universe, which is a common enough ambition but rarely a realistic one. Here, though, the warlord has particularly invulnerable robot slaves, which coupled with his supernova-driven time machines is enough to make the Guardians send three dozen Lanterns.

Three dozen Lanterns seems vast overkill, but time paradox traps – and the fact that the Fiend of Arassat had expected you – evens the scales. Hal Jordan is what makes them unbalanced after all. The Lantern the Guardians assigned as leader is crippled, and thirty-two heads turn towards the human.

Jordan wins – and it is Jordan, for though the records of Oa will say he had inspired the task force to an impossible victory, in truth he could have done it alone.

You'd been jealous, almost, of Earth, to have four Lanterns at once while most worlds have never had two in their entire history. Jordan shows you Earth, afterwards. A world where monsters with powers comparable to a Lantern are commonplace….

John Stewart, another member of the Earth contingent, mentions to you that Earth is believed to be in some period where it serves as a nexus, a focal point for events of multiversal importance. You don't doubt it. Some things are simply too absurd for coincidence.

* * *

Two years after Arassat, and another dead planet, one whose destroyer perished in that same explosion. You don't even flinch. A billion lives is almost nothing, by now. There is only the determination to prevent this from happening again, as best as you can.

And then the recall, to Oa, and word of Thaal Sinestro. Rogue Lanterns, drunk with power, are nothing unusual. Rogue veterans are rarer. Rogue Lanterns that last more than a decade while warring with the Corps? You're not sure, as the records are censored, but Sinestro might be the first.

So you take the opportunity to see your family for some brief minutes before going to Oa, as you still do before the most important missions, and then fly to protect the universe's desperate shield. There, you learn things are far worse than previously thought, for Sinestro has brought an army.

An army of Lanterns – yellow Lanterns.

How such a thing is possible, you have no idea. The Lanterns speak of Qward, but Qward is often invoked as a cheap explanation for anything weird. So you merely fight, fight perhaps the best battle of your life, from the nanoscale to the megascale, but it's not enough. They take some of the Corps prisoner, targets chosen seemingly at random, and you are one of them.

But not for long; for, it seems, Thaal Sinestro does not actually have a use for you except as example.

"Ask of me one question, young Lantern," he tells you before the end, that Korugarian that has not even seen a millennium of life and yet fights beings that have seen millions as superior, not equal. "Your brilliance has earned that much."

"Why did you turn on the Corps?" you ask. "Not why they turned on you – " you know that story – "but is there nothing you have to do that is a better use of time than destroying the universe's protectors?" Thaal Sinestro looks into the void above your chains, and you see ambition transcending time in his black eyes.

"Protectors," he says, with a measured disdain. "The average lifespan of a Green Lantern over their billion-year history is four years. Over the last million years, it is less than two. Kilowog has worked wonders with the current generation of Lanterns, but after he goes, even that will pass."

Sinestro whirls around and opens a curtain, revealing the other prisoners – but not Ion, for it seems the rogue Lantern has a special purpose in mind for the Torchbearer – observing you. They are afraid. You are, too. This is a place of so much fear that you are not ashamed to admit it, even if it is only to yourself.

"The Green Lanterns have weakened," he says, staring at you in deep determination. "The Guardians have weakened. It has been a slow senility, but they are more likely to destroy the universe, now, than save it. Without me to replace it, the Green Lantern Corps would fall within a millennium; the universe's last shield would fade, and everything would end. Parallax was so close a call… and that, during the golden generation."

You see, in that fragment of time before Sinestro raises his ring for the execution, a glimmer in those eyes as he speaks of the end. A glimmer of... desperation?

No, simpler than that. A glimmer of fear.

His construct is simple, an ancient sword, as he raises it over your head and prepares for a swing. Thaal Sinestro does not need outwardly impressive constructs – at least not outside of battle.

"Not that you would have seen that day anyhow," he says as the blade comes down.


End file.
